The Penguin Henry Lawson Short Stories

by Henry Lawson

  Jim was turning three then, and he was a cure. He was so old-fashioned that he used to frighten me sometimes – I’d almost think that there was something supernatural about him; though, of course, I never took any notice of that rot about some children being too old-fashioned to live. There’s always the ghoulish old hag (and some not so old nor haggish either) who’ll come round and shake up young parents with such croaks as, ‘You’ll never rear that child – he’s too bright for his age.’ To the devil with them! I say.

  But I really thought that Jim was too intelligent for his age, and I often told Mary that he ought to be kept back, and not let talk too much to old diggers and long lanky jokers of bushmen who rode in and hung their horses outside my place on Sunday afternoons.

  I don’t believe in parents talking about their own children everlastingly – you get sick of hearing them; and their kids are generally little devils, and turn out larrikins as likely as not.

  But, for all that, I really think that Jim, when he was three years old, was the most wonderful little chap, in every way, that I ever saw.

  For the first hour or so, along the road, he was telling me all about his adventures at his auntie’s.

  ‘But they spoilt me too much, dad,’ he said, as solemn as a native bear. ‘An’ besides, a boy ought to stick to his parrans!’

  I was taking out a cattle-pup for a drover I knew, and the pup took up a good deal of Jim’s time.

  Sometimes he’d jolt me the way he talked; and other times I’d have to turn away my head and cough, or shout at the horses, to keep from laughing outright. And once, when I was taken that way, he said:

  ‘What are you jerking your shoulders and coughing, and grunting, and going on that way for, dad? Why don’t you tell me something?’

  ‘Tell you what, Jim?’

  ‘Tell me some talk.’

  So I told him all the talk I could think of. And I had to brighten up, I can tell you, and not draw too much on my imagination – for Jim was a terror at cross-examination when the fit took him; and he didn’t think twice about telling you when he thought you were talking nonsense. Once he said:

  ‘I’m glad you took me home with you, dad. You’ll get to know Jim.’

  ‘What!’ I said.

  ‘You’ll get to know Jim.’

  ‘But don’t I know you already?’

  ‘No, you don’t. You never has time to know Jim at home.’

  And, looking back, I saw that it was cruel true. I had known in my heart all along that this was the truth; but it came to me like a blow from Jim. You see, it had been a hard struggle for the last year or so; and when I was home for a day or two I was generally too busy, or too tired and worried, or full of schemes for the future to take much notice of Jim. Mary used to speak to me about it, sometimes. ‘You never take notice of the child,’ she’d say. ‘You could surely find a few minutes of an evening. What’s the use of always worrying and brooding? Your brain will go with a snap some day, and, if you get over it, it will teach you a lesson. You’ll be an old man, and Jim a young one, before you realise that you had a child once. Then it will be too late.’

  This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with her, because I knew it all too well. I never worried for myself – only for Mary and the children. And often, as the days went by, I said to myself, ‘I’ll take more notice of Jim and give Mary more of my time, just as soon as I can see things clear ahead a bit.’ And the hard days went on, and the weeks, and the months, and the years – Ah, well!

  Mary used to say, when things would get worse, ‘Why don’t you talk to me, Joe? Why don’t you tell me your thoughts, instead of shutting yourself up in yourself and brooding – eating your heart out? It’s hard for me: I get to think you’re tired of me, and selfish. I might be cross and speak sharp to you when you are in trouble. How am I to know, if you don’t tell me?’

  But I didn’t think she’d understand.

  And so, getting acquainted, and chumming and dozing, with the gums closing over our heads here and there, and the ragged patches of sunlight and shade passing up, over the horses, over us, on the front of the load, over the load, and down on to the white, dusty road again – Jim and I got along the lonely Bush road and over the ridges some fifteen miles before sunset, and camped at Ryan’s Crossing on Sandy Creek for the night. I got the horses out and took the harness off. Jim wanted badly to help me, but I made him stay on the load; for one of the horses – a vicious, red-eyed chestnut – was a kicker; he’d broken a man’s leg. I got the feed-bags stretched across the shafts, and the chaff and corn into them; and there stood the horses all round with their rumps north, south, and west, and their heads between the shafts, munching and switching their tails. We use double shafts, you know, for horse-teams – two pairs side by side – and prop them up, and stretch bags between them, letting the bags sag to serve as feed boxes. I threw the spare tarpaulin over the wheels on one side, letting about half of it lie on the ground in case of damp, and so making a floor and a breakwind. I threw down bags and the blankets and ’possum rug against the wheel to make a camp for Jim and the cattle-pup, and got a gin-case we used for a tucker-box, the frying-pan and billy down, and made a good fire at a log close handy, and soon everything was comfortable. Ryan’s Crossing was a grand camp. I stood with my pipe in my mouth, my hands behind my back, and my back to the fire, and took the country in.

  Sandy Creek came down along a western spur of the range: the banks here were deep and green, and the water ran clear over the granite bars, boulders, and gravel. Behind us was a dreary flat covered with those gnarled, grey-barked, dry-rotted ‘native apple-trees’ (about as much like apple-trees as the native bear is like any other), and a nasty bit of sand-dusty road that I was always glad to get over in wet weather. To the left on our side of the creek were reedy marshes, with frogs croaking, and across the creek the dark box-scrub-covered ridges ended in steep ‘sidings’ coming down to the creek-bank, and to the main road that skirted them, running on west up over a ‘saddle’ in the ridges and on towards Dubbo. The road by Lahey’s Creek to a place called Cobborah branched off, through dreary apple-tree and stringy-bark flats to the left, just beyond the crossing: all these fanlike branch tracks from the Cudgegong were inside a big horse-shoe in the Great Western Line, and so they gave small carriers a chance, now that Cobb & Co’s coaches and the big teams and vans had shifted out of the main western terminus. There were tall she-oaks all along the creek and a clump of big ones over a deep waterhole just above the crossing. The creek oaks have rough barked trunks, like English elms, but are much taller and higher to the branches – and the leaves are reedy; Kendall, the Australian poet, calls them the ‘she-oak harps Aeolian’. Those trees are always sigh-sigh-sighing – more of a sigh than a sough or the ‘whoosh’ of gum-trees in the wind. You always hear them sighing, even when you can’t feel any wind. It’s the same with telegraph wires: put your head against a telegraph-post on a dead, still day, and you’ll hear and feel the far-away roar of the wires. But then the oaks are not connected with the distance, where there might be wind; and they don’t roar in a gale, only sigh louder and softer according to the wind, and never seem to go above or below a certain pitch – like a big harp with all the strings the same. I used to have a theory that those creek oaks got the wind’s voice telephoned to them, so to speak, through the ground.

  I happened to look down, and there was Jim (I thought he was on the tarpaulin playing with the pup): he was standing close beside me with his legs wide apart, his hands behind his back, and his back to the fire.

  He held his head a little on one side, and there was such an old, old, wise expression in his big brown eyes – just as if he’d been a child for a hundred years or so, or as though he were listening to those oaks, and understanding them in a fatherly sort of way.

  ‘Dad!’ he said presently – ‘Dad! do you think I’ll ever grow up to be a man?’

  ‘Why – why, Jim?’ I gasped.

  ‘Becau
se I don’t want to.’

  I couldn’t think of anything against this. It made me uneasy. But I remember I used to have a childish dread of growing up to be a man.

  ‘Jim,’ I said, to break the silence, ‘do you hear what the she-oaks say?’

  ‘No, I don’t. Is they talking?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, without thinking.

  ‘What is they saying?’ he asked.

  I took the bucket and went down to the creek for some water for tea. I thought Jim would follow with a little tin billy he had, but he didn’t: when I got back to the fire he was again on the ’possum rug, comforting the pup. I fried some bacon and eggs that I’d brought out with me. Jim sang out from the wagon:

  ‘Don’t cook too much, dad – I mightn’t be hungry.’

  I got the tin plates, and pint-pots and things out on a clean new flour-bag, in honour of Jim, and dished up. He was leaning back on the rug looking at the pup in a listless sort of way. I reckoned he was tired out, and pulled the gin-case up close to him for a table and put his plate on it. But he only tried a mouthful or two, and then he said:

  ‘I ain’t hungry, dad! You’ll have to eat it all.’

  It made me uneasy – I never like to see a child of mine turn from his food. They had given him some tinned salmon in Gulgong and I was afraid that that was upsetting him. I was always against tinned muck.

  ‘Sick, Jim?’ I asked.

  ‘No, Dad, I ain’t sick; I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’

  ‘Have some tea, sonny?’

  ‘Yes, dad.’

  I gave him some tea, with some milk in it that I’d brought in a bottle from his aunt’s for him. He took a sip or two and then put the pint-pot on the gin-case.

  ‘Jim’s tired, dad,’ he said.

  I made him lie down while I fixed up a camp for the night. It had turned a bit chilly, so I let the big tarpaulin down all round – it was made to cover a high load, the flour in the wagon didn’t come above the rail, so the tarpaulin came down well on to the ground. I fixed Jim up a comfortable bed under the tail-end of the wagon: when I went to lift him in he was lying back, looking up at the stars in a half-dreamy, half-fascinated way that I didn’t like. Whenever Jim was extra old-fashioned, or affectionate, there was danger.

  ‘How do you feel now, sonny?’

  It seemed a minute before he heard me and turned from the stars.

  ‘Jim’s better, dad.’ Then he said something like, ‘The stars are looking at me.’ I thought he was half asleep. I took off his jacket and boots and carried him in under the wagon and made him comfortable for the night.

  ‘Kiss me ’night-night, daddy,’ he said.

  I’d rather he hadn’t asked me – it was a bad sign. As I was going to the fire he called me back.

  ‘What is it, Jim?’

  ‘Get me my things and the cattle-pup, please, daddy.’

  I was scared now. His things were some toys and rubbish he’d brought from Gulgong, and I remembered, the last time he had convulsions, he took all his toys and a kitten to bed with him. And ‘night-night’ and ‘daddy’ were two-year-old language to Jim. I’d thought he’d forgotten those words – he seemed to be going back.

  ‘Are you quite warm enough, Jim?’

  ‘Yes, dad.’

  I started to walk up and down – I always did this when I was extra worried.

  I was frightened now about Jim, though I tried to hide the fact from myself. Presently he called again. ‘What is it, Jim?’

  ‘Take the blankets off me, fahver – Jim’s sick!’ (They’d been teaching him to say father.)

  I was scared now. I remembered a neighbour of ours had a little girl die (she swallowed a pin), and when she was going she said:

  ‘Take the blankets off me, muvver – I’m dying.’

  And I couldn’t get that out of my head.

  I threw back a fold of the ’possum rug, and felt Jim’s head – he seemed cool enough.

  ‘Where do you feel bad, sonny?’

  No answer for a while; then he said suddenly, but in a voice as if he were talking in his sleep:

  ‘Put my boots on, please, daddy. I want to go home to muvver!’

  I held his hand, and comforted him for a while; then he slept – in a restless, feverish sort of way.

  I got the bucket I used for water for the horses and stood it over the fire; I ran to the creek with the big kerosene-tin bucket and got it full of cold water and stood it handy. I got the spade (we always carried one to dig wheels out of bogs in wet weather) and turned a corner of the tarpaulin back, dug a hole, and trod the tarpaulin down into the hole to serve for a bath, in case of the worst. I had a tin of mustard, and meant to fight a good round for Jim, if death came along.

  I stooped in under the tail-board of the wagon and felt Jim. His head was burning hot, and his skin parched and dry as a bone.

  Then I lost nerve and started blundering backward and forward between the wagon and the fire, and repeating what I’d heard Mary say the last time we fought for Jim: ‘God! don’t take my child! God! don’t take my boy!’ I’d never had much faith in doctors, but, my God! I wanted one then. The nearest was fifteen miles away.

  I threw back my head and stared up at the branches in desperation; and – well, I don’t ask you to take much stock in this, though most old Bushmen will believe anything of the Bush by night; and – now, it might have been that I was unstrung, or it might have been a patch of the sky outlined in the gently moving branches, or the blue smoke rising up. But I saw the figure of a woman, all white, come down, down, nearly to the limbs of the trees, point on up the main road, and then float up and up and vanish, still pointing. I thought Mary was dead! Then it flashed on me –

  Four or five miles up the road, over the ‘saddle,’ was an old shanty that had been a half-way inn before the Great Western Line got round as far as Dubbo, and took the coach traffic off those old Bush roads. A man named Brighten lived there. He was a selector; did a little farming, and as much sly-grog selling as he could. He was married – but it wasn’t that: I’d thought of them, but she was a childish, worn-out, spiritless woman, and both were pretty ‘ratty’ from hardship and loneliness – they weren’t likely to be of any use to me. But it was this: I’d heard talk, among some women in Gulgong, of a sister of Brighten’s wife who’d gone out to live with them lately: she’d been a hospital matron in the city, they said; and there were yarns about her. Some said she got the sack for exposing the doctors – or carrying on with them – I didn’t remember which. The fact of a city woman going out to live in such a place, with such people, was enough to make talk among women in a town twenty miles away, but then there must have been something extra about her, else Bushmen wouldn’t have talked and carried her name so far; and I wanted a woman out of the ordinary now. I even reasoned this way, thinking like lightning, as I knelt over Jim between the big back wheels of the wagon.

  I had an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack, following the team. In a minute I had her saddled and bridled; I tied the end of a half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end and dumped it on to the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim; I wrapped him in a blanket, and scrambled into the saddle with him.

  The next minute we were stumbling down the steep bank, clattering and splashing over the crossing, and struggling up the opposite bank to the level. The mare, as I told you, was an old racer, but broken-winded – she must have run without wind after the first half-mile. She had the old racing instinct in her strong, and whenever I rode in company I’d have to pull her hard else she’d race the other horse or burst. She ran low fore and aft, and was the easiest horse I ever rode. She ran like wheels on rails, with a bit of a tremble now and then – like a railway carriage – when she settled down to it.

  The chaff-bag had slipped off, in the creek I suppose, and I let the bridle-rein go and held Jim up to me like a baby the whole way. Let the strongest man, who isn’t used to it, hold a baby in one position for five minutes – and Ji
m was fairly heavy. But I never felt the ache in my arms that night – it must have gone before I was in a fit state of mind to feel it. And at home I’d often growled about being asked to hold the baby for a few minutes. I could never brood comfortably and nurse a baby at the same time. It was a ghostly moonlight night. There’s no timber in the world so ghostly as the Australian Bush in moonlight – or just about daybreak. The all-shaped patches of moonlight falling between ragged, twisted boughs; the ghostly blue-white bark of the ‘white-box’ trees; a dead, naked white ring-barked tree, or dead white stump starting out here and there, and the ragged patches of shade and light on the road that made anything, from the shape of a spotted bullock to a naked corpse laid out stark. Roads and tracks through the Bush made by moonlight – every one seeming straighter and clearer than the real one; you have to trust to your horse then. Sometimes the naked white trunk of a red stringy-bark tree, where a sheet of bark had been taken off, would start out like a ghost from the dark Bush. And dew or frost glistening on these things according to the season. Now and again a great grey kangaroo, that had been feeding on a green patch down by the road, would start with a ‘thump-thump’, and away up the siding.

  The Bush seemed full of ghosts that night – all going my way – and being left behind by the mare. Once I stopped to look at Jim: I just sat back and the mare ‘propped’ – she’d been a stock-horse, and was used to ‘cutting-out’. I felt Jim’s hands and forehead; he was in a burning fever. I bent forward, and the old mare settled down to it again. I kept saying out loud – and Mary and me often laughed about it (afterwards): ‘He’s limp yet! – Jim’s limp yet!’ (the words seemed jerked out of me by sheer fright) – ‘He’s limp yet!’ till the mare’s feet took it up. Then, just when I thought she was doing her best and racing her hardest, she suddenly started forward, like a cable tram gliding along on its own and the grip put on suddenly. It was just what she’d do when I’d be riding alone and a strange horse drew up from behind – the old racing instinct. I felt the thing too! I felt as if a strange horse was there! And then – the words just jerked out of me by sheer funk – I started saying, ‘Death is riding to-night!… Death is racing to-night!… Death is riding to-night!’ till the hoof-beats took that up. And I believe the old mare felt the black horse at her side and was going to beat him or break her heart.